I don’t know much about Canadian law, but don’t you have freedom of speech and the press up there? Granted, the guy’s a boogerhead, but doesn’t he have a right to be a boogerhead without the gov’t coming down and telling him what he can and can’t publish?
We have our own share of boogerheads down here in the States, but I will defend to the death their right to be boogerheads. Everyone down here knows Fred Phelps is an asshole, but I don’t think anyone would ever dream of getting the gov’t involved in shutting him up.
Can anyone enlighten me on this? I’m not trying to stir the pot, I just really don’t understand their reasoning.
Well, the reasoning is explained quite well in the linked article, I should have thought:
This was a lawsuit that Kempling himself launched against the BC College of Teachers for suspending him for “professional misconduct or conduct unbecoming a BCCT member.” The court, in this particular instance, isn’t telling him what he can and cannot say or publish.* It’s just saying that the BCCT isn’t violating his Charter rights by suspending him.
*Though Canada does have an anti-hate speech law, which in a more extreme case might come into play.
We don’t have unrestricted freedom of speech here in Canada. Rightly, IMHO, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms doesn’t protect hate speech or literature. The teacher in question was clearly in violation of the law.
This topic has been discussed previously in GD. I don’t have time to dig up links at the moment but try a search on Ernst Zundel or Dr. Laura and Canada and I’m sure you’ll find some in depth discussion.
The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms has a controversial limiting clause, which allows exceptions to free speech and other fundamental freedoms. Section 1:
These “reasonable limits” are invoked to limit speech in hate literature, ban obscene material, and so on. But hey, Don Cherry is still on the air, which is proof it isn’t invoked that often…
But, as someone else pointed out, the issue here was his suspension, not his freedom of speech per se.
The teacher in question is also a guidance councilor. That probably played a factor in the ruling. Councilors are there to council, not tell kids with issues of sexuality that they are immoral perverts.
Plenty of speech in the USA is not protected by the First Amendment. Porn, for example.
Having said that, read the article carefully; the gentleman in question was not being criminally prosecuted. He was suing the B.C. College of Teachers for suspending him for a month - which is certainly NOT the same thing. Nobody is forcing this gentleman to be a teacher, and he has no inherenet civil right to be one. It would not be hard to come up with a reasonable argument that the College of Teachers is entitled to suspend people who publically express hateful remarks about a group of people than many of their students happen to be a part of.
His lawsuit strikes me as being frankly somewhat frivolous. He entered into a contractual agreement and then deliberately violated the spirit, if not the letter, of the agreement. He should be glad he only got a one month suspension. If I wrote an equivalent letter to the editor - say, denouncing my employer as a den of liars and thieves - they’d can my ass in ten seconds, and you can be sure the judge would laugh me out of court, too.
Canada’s Hate Speech legislation is unrelated to this ruling, and it’s unlikely that the teacher would have run afoul of it.
Section 181 has many protections against too broad of an application, and contains specific language that exempts people who are earnestly trying to express a religious opinion. Quite apart from that, the onus is on the state to prove that the offending communication advocates genocide or is likely to create a breach of the peace.
As others have pointed out, he’s still quite free to publish his opinions. The court just ruled that the BCCT has the right to show him the door.
So this is a violation of his contract with his employer? Like a morals clause? I see. Thanks for clearing that up.
Actually, that’s not quite true. The Supreme Court ruled that porn is defined by community standards, sort of “I can’t define it, but I know it when I see it.” So this is why you get some states invading people’s houses to confiscate copies of The Red Drum, while others sell it on the street. The only speech restricted by the courts (in violation of the First, IMO) is the McCain-Feingold Campaign Reform Law, which prohibits political advertising 60 days before an election.
I knew I could get things straigtened out here…thanks!
Pornography is not outside the bounds of the First Amendment. “Obscenity” is (Roth v United States, 354 U.S. 476 (1957)). Obscenity is legally defined under Miller v California 413 U.S. 15 (1973) as material which “the average person, applying contemporary community standards would find … the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest, … the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law, and … the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.”
The movie is “The Tin Drum,” not “The Red Drum.”
McCain-Feingold doesn’t violate the First Amendment because the Supreme Court said it doesn’t.
No, he does not have the right to be a boogerhead, if by exercising his right to be a boogerhead impinges on somebody else’s Charter Rights. http://laws.justice.gc.ca/en/charter/
In a nutshell, all rights in Canada are moderated by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and EVERY right is considered equal, with no right ‘trumping’ any other right (unlike the USA, where the right to free speech frequently trumps every other right).
As an example, this is why details released during a voir dire hearing cannot be published, because the right to free speech cannot overrule a right to a fair trial.